Daphne Bramham: Promises, promises, but no answers for child poverty

Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun10.09.2015

According to a study by the anti-poverty group Campaign 2000, in 20 of British Columbia’s 36 federal ridings the percentage of children living below the poverty line is higher than the national average of 19 per cent.

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Canada is a rich country. Strong banking regulations sheltered Canadians from the worst of the 2008 recession and we now have one of the strongest economies in the developed world.

So how is it that there are more poor kids in Canada than the combined populations of Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island?

Why is there not a single federal riding in Canada that doesn’t have kids living in poverty?

No one in Canada wants to deprive children of getting a healthy start in life and every political party has announced family-friendly policies during this election campaign. Of course, I can’t remember a campaign where all of the parties haven’t pledged to make the lives of children and families better.

Twenty-six years ago, members of Parliament voted unanimously to eliminate child poverty by 2020. The reality is that no government has yet hit on the solution or been willing to pay for it. The other reality is that there are still as many as 1.3 million children in Canada whose basic needs are barely being met.

This week, to raise awareness of the issue of child poverty, the anti-poverty group Campaign 2000 mapped it, overlaying Statistics Canada’s 2013 after-tax, low-income cut off, or LICO, on the 308 ridings of the old electoral boundaries map.

There are those (including the Fraser Institute) who say that LICO doesn’t strictly equate with poverty. But let’s leave that debate for the economists and agree that, for now, LICO is the only measure available to identify children and families who are in the most financial peril.

Of those 308 ridings in Canada, there were 147 — including 20 of British Columbia’s 36 — where the percentage of children living below the poverty line is higher than the national average of 19 per cent.

B.C.’s two poorest ridings were Nanaimo-Cowichan and Surrey North, with rates of 28.2 per cent and 27.7 per cent respectively. But, they were far from the worst in Canada. Two-thirds of the kids in the riding of Churchill in Manitoba were living below the poverty line. In Toronto, eight ridings have child poverty rates of 30 per cent or more.

Because all ridings don’t have equal populations, the old riding of Surrey North had the highest number of poor children in B.C., an estimated 8,290. That was followed by another Surrey riding, Fleetwood-Port Kells, with an estimated 8,270. Vancouver Centre has the fewest at 2,530, which reflects its older demographic and a higher percentage of single residents. But even North Vancouver, B.C.’s riding with the lowest rate, had an estimated 3,100 children living in poverty.

Campaign 2000’s network of more than 120 non-profit groups focus on those poor children who go to school hungry without proper clothing and without the money for hotdog days and field trips.

The Liberals’ $60-million promise of a $150-a-year tax break for teachers recognizes that they often fill the gaps for their students, while the Conservatives have also recognized the problems faced by families of school-aged children by promising tax credits for students’ bus passes and textbooks.

But this is really about poor families, including the working poor who struggle every day and often live in deplorable housing.

These are families that can’t benefit from the tax rebates for music lessons or sports equipment or save enough money to take advantage of tax-free savings accounts or income splitting.

Their needs are more basic. For those able to work, they need help so that they can get jobs that provide enough income so that they can afford decent housing, even in Metro Vancouver. And they need to know that if they are working, their children will be well cared for while they are away.

Tackling poverty, hunger and homelessness makes economic sense because Campaign 2000 estimates poverty-associated costs in Canada are between $72- and $86 billion annually. Those costs result partly from increased use of health care because of higher rates of physical and mental illness and substance abuse.

Child poverty also results in lower educational attainment, which results in higher rates of unemployment over a lifetime.

Unfortunately, the Conservatives and the New Democrats only released their full platforms on Friday, the day that advance polls opened and little more than two weeks before election day on Oct. 19.

Therefore, no one, including groups like Campaign 2000, has had time to do full comparisons of what the parties are promising.

But as we’ve learned over the past 26 years, when it comes to child poverty, promises often don’t mean very much.

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Daphne Bramham: Promises, promises, but no answers for child poverty

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